Ansteopality Revisited

[Tim McDaniel]

On Mon, 21 Oct 1996, Heidi J Torres wrote:
> Mari here.  Lots of kingdoms have lions both in their heraldry and
> named in their award structure.  Historically it's even more
> popular.  As for the Order of the Lion, I know that An Tir also has
> an Order of the Lion, patterned after the Ansteorran one.

Lions were indeed the single most popular animal in mediaeval armory
and was popular in popular esteem (sorry about the redundancy there).
A name or armory based on that would be excellent.

> The only problem I would foresee -- if the people wanted such a name
> and image -- would be in designing arms with a lion that would pass;
> which should be a lot easier now that we're not comparing against
> mundane heraldry anymore.  (Or, at least I think I heard we're not.)

More or less.  It used to be pretty much that, if we knew of a coat of
arms' real existance, we'd protect it.  Now, it's famous armory only.
Unfortunately, that's a subjective and not well-defined term, not even
defined for SCA heraldic use.  (One big unsettled issue: is it armory
that is itself famous, or the armory of famous people, even if the
armory itself isn't well-known?  Those are, respectively, the "arms"
school of thought and the "man" school of thought.)  At the moment, it
means national and royal arms and flags plus maybe a couple of hundred
other famous coats.  (Admiral Nelson.  Bavaria.  Archbishop of
Canterbury.  William Marshall.)  The current Laurel Sovereign of Arms
was vehemently opposed to this change, the "Modest Proposal", so the
pendulum might swing back towards greatly-expanded protection again.

-- 
Daniel de Lincoln
                             Tim McDaniel
                        Reply-To: tmcd at crl.com
    mcdaniel at mcdaniel.dallas.tx.us is wrong tool.  Never use this.